"What do you do when you feel sad?" people often ask me. (Some even ask, "Do you ever get sad?")
Yes, of course my kids and I both feel sadness, anger, anxiety -- sometimes downright misery -- just like everyone else. Leading a joyful life does not mean always trying to be happy.
At the same time, I'm not really one for rumination. Meaning: My kids and I feel our feelings -- often deeply -- and then, if the feelings are negative, we try to move on. If the feelings are positive, we try to savor them, to hang on to them.
When people hear that I encourage my kids to move on from unpleasant feelings, many of them worry. "Well, make sure you aren't denying their negative emotions," I've been warned, "or sending the message that bad feelings are bad and should be avoided."
Rest assured: My kids do know that all feelings, good or bad, are okay. They know that I see emotions like sadness, frustration, anxiety and jealousy as windows into their world, and that I love to hear about everything that's happening with them, whether positive or negative. I do not encourage them to buck up, or stuff it down; I do not say things to them like, "You're fine."
But I do encourage my kids to move on from bad feelings, because rumination is bad for you. As psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky explains in her great book "The How of Happiness":
Overthinking ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person's ability to solve problems, saps motivation, and interferes with concentration and initiative. Moreover, although people have a strong sense that they are gaining insight into themselves and their problems during their ruminations, this is rarely the case. What they do gain is a distorted, pessimistic perspective on their lives.
Suffice it to say, in my household when something negative happens we practice the skills that we need to be able to let go of a grudge and not ruminate.
I've written before about teaching kids how to forgive. Today I'd like to expand a little on how I help my kids feel better after they've been feeling badly.
1) Accept the negative feelings.
The key to this is not to deny what we are feeling, but rather to lean into our feelings, even if they are painful. Take a moment to be mindful and narrate: "I'm feeling anxious right now," or, "This situation is making me tense." Hang in there with unpleasant feelings at least long enough to acknowledge them.
This is the gist of emotion coaching kids: We help them label what they are feeling, and we validate that their feelings are okay. With younger kids, the challenge is helping them understand that while bad feelings are always all right, bad behavior never is. Be crystal clear about this. For example, it is totally okay that your child is feeling jealous and hateful toward her sister. At the same time, it is never okay to hit her.
2) Problem solve.
What did you learn from that embarrassing situation? What can you do to improve a difficult situation tomorrow? Who else can help? Who do you need to forgive before you'll feel better? Put a plan into place.
3) Let go. Move on. Try to feel better.
This means that we make a genuine effort to cultivate happiness, gratitude, hope or any other positive emotion; researchers call this "deep acting."
Faking a smile or other pleasantries to cover our negative emotions (what researchers call "surface acting") without actually trying to change our underlying negative emotions will often make us feel worse rather than better. But when we genuinely try to feel more positive -- when we do try to change our underlying feelings -- we usually end up feeling fewer negative emotions and more positive emotions.
Most often, moving on means distracting ourselves or our children from the situation. We need to leave the scene of the crime, so to speak. In my next post, I'm going to give you a nice long list of techniques that my kids and I use to keep ourselves from overthinking difficult situations, and to move on when we want to feel better.
What negative situations do you find yourself overthinking? Do you notice your children ruminating about certain situations?
© 2011 Christine Carter, Ph.D.
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I find that if you tend to ruminate, give yourself permission to think about it until you are simply bored to tears with the issue. It kind of wears out your mind. I do try and stay busy so that I do not go into a deep depression, but basically I just have to ride it out. A few days later I'm ok and I am no longer ruminating.
I also search the web for other people stories regarding the issue. Everyone has problems and issues that bother them. Then I don't feel so alone and can be kinder to myself.
Works for me. ;-)
Problem solving is nearly impossible when you're depressed, so don't try to, just keep busy and it will work itself out (unless it's chemical then go to a psychiatrist, get medication)
Feeling better:
Humor watch funny movies, t.v. go to a comedy club, play a funny game, watch funny vids on YouTube
Eat bananas (loaded with tryptophan the feel good chemical)
Smell cinnamon (a natural energizer)
Smell spearmint, mint, a natural calmer, opens up senses
Go for a walk out in nature, watch birds, get some sunlight
Get outside
Make some crafts, just create something
Go see a good comic book movie, escape into another world
Take a mini nap
Drink some gatorade it will put electrolytes back into your system
Pet your cat or dog, take your dog for a walk
Volunteer for something
Spend time with people you care about
Workout (exercise it great for feel good endorphins)
Rearrange your room
1) smoke weed
2) crank tunes
3) invite girlfriend to play, 'ride your favorite pony' on your face
Just an alternative for those who might need one, so please do not express mean sentiments.
It's rather frustrating to see this nonsense, as somebody who's experienced some rather severe problems that have only ever found reprieve in electroconvulsive therapy (and even then, only fleetingly) to:
a) utterly botch any characterization of depression, and psychotherapy by association
b) believe that there is a discrete and rather obvious criterion to distinguish the euthymic from the disordered (and that the distinction automatically shifts the problem from personality to biology).
c) believe that medication is a definitive solution; often times it's the lesser of all available evils, but medications often fail and are laden with problems of their own.
i find out why i am feeling depressed and do my best to work out of it.
if that fails a rootbeer float is my go to option.
To address the matter more thoroughly, anybody who believes X neurotransmitter is an antidepressant or "feel good molecule" is full of it. Basic neurophysiology here: these chemicals work because they bind to receptors which depolarize neurons, which activate pathways, etc. Long term psychiatric problems are structural, not merely determined by raw quantities of certain chemicals. Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression, and that means the brain has an impaired reward system. Try and figure out how that information fits in with your assertion.